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Thursday, June 16, 2011

TechCrunch, recently acquired by AOL, seems determined to pierce the secrets of the projects underway at Facebook after lifting the veil on the new system of photo sharing social network, the U.S. site attack today "project Spartan.

Spartan Project is the codename of a new mobile platform built entirely around the technologies HTML5: the purpose of Facebook is to abstract the application stores to be housed with applications in the browser.And not just any browser: Facebook is developing its project with Mobile Safari Spartan head, and the App Store by shading.

The aim of the company Mark Zuckerberg would be very clear: "use equipment iOS against Apple itself to blow up the bottleneck that exists in the distribution of mobile applications." Facebook plans to use his clout (700 million users) to tackle one of the platforms of the most dynamic and most consistent, genuine frontal assault - the name of the project is revealing.

MG Siegler of TechCrunch claims to have had an informal demonstration of the Spartan project.It appears at first glance as a web version of the Facebook application, which itself is already very little use of native functions.A new menu has appeared, however: it lets you run web applications related to Facebook.About 80 developers would work hand in hand with Facebook to make their applications compatible, such as Zynga (Farmville, etc..) Or the Huffington Post (AOL group).

Facebook, which is a platform for basic applications, so this would lead to iOS paradigm on which it would move beyond being relegated to mere application .One can understand why the relationship between Apple and Facebook have cooled in recent months and why the Cupertino company has chosen to promote Twitter, integrated service as first level in iOS 5, instead of Facebook, scheduled for iOS 4.

The applications are therefore hosted on servers in their creator: Facebook serve both as a showcase of necessary component (connection profile, interaction between players, etc..), And payment system.This is indeed the last bastion that Zuckerberg would like to drop: the micro-payment system of the App Store, one of the few used very widely.Facebook it a try in the past with credit for time without a hit.On landing in a world accustomed to micro-payment systems with the App Store, Facebook hopes to attract new users - pay.

Facebook's initiative could paradoxically help Apple's most popular applications on social network gaming, application categories also very popular in the world Flash.Through HTML5, Facebook would help change attitudes on this issue and thus help to eliminate Apple Flash.

Android will also be affected by the Spartan project, but IOS is considered as the reference platform and the target market first.The launch date is not yet known, but the Spartan project should be unveiled in 2011.